A Love Story
by Hitsuzen Nakagauchi
Summary: A Rukawa pov. who said he is as cold as ice? but yet, he knows that in the real world someone's death is never the end. read how he wrote his 'soft' side, about narrating his affection for a few women in his life


She went to his room...to finally look at it before she leave. It has been a year since she find him lying in his bed, peacefully sleeping. She wants him that way, always. Her love for him is unmeasurable, but he decided for her to stay. His sudden departure had crumbled her heart to the extreme rate. No matter how unexpressionative he is, she knows what he feels, she knows how he feels...if only she had come earlier.

She opened the drawer of his study table. It was not empty for she found a two page paper with his writings on it. She sat on the swivel chair and starts to read it.

I know that I had been very cold or distant to people who cares for me, I appreciate those concerns. It pains me to write this. Perhaps there are other stories more painful, more bittersweet than this. But this is my love story, and it has to be told.

For as long as I can remember, my obaa-san had always lived with us. Almost every family I know has a relative like her- the unmarried sister, the spinster aunt. But obaa-san was more than just a label. She lived with us in Kanagawa not to be taken care of, but the other way around. She stayed with us for nearly my entire life- until three years ago, when she had to go back to her hometown in Kyoto...because she was very sick.

Ever since she went home, the entire family occasionally went there for a visit. They took every oppurtunity to go there- someone's birthday, a week-long summer vacations. Everyone went home, except for me. There were always something more important, more urgent that kept me postponing the inevitable trip home... Haruka is always incest about me ignoring this not until that phone call came late three years ago.

It was Friday. Haruka was talking to her friend on the other line, when our aunt from the province interrupted. She encouraged me to visit as soon as I could. "No rush," they said, "maybe you can make it next weekend." They never demanded anything. But the question was there, unspoken, only I was too frightened to comprehend what it meant.

"Oniichan...the last time I was in Kyoto, obaa-san wants to see you. But I said that you are busy preparing for a match. Maybe you should come now..."

I heard her and I didn't want to go, although I found myself then until I was boarding the train with my sister bound for Kyoto the next Monday morning. I thought I had good reasons not to. My weekend was booked- a final practice before the game, a total rest at Saturday night. Good reasons, I assured myself. Looking back, though, I realized that those were never reasons. They were only excuses.

I didn't want to go. Period. I didn't want to go because that would make things so real. It would make her sickness all too tangible, to close to home. At that point, I felt that my selfishness was all that was keeping her from slipping away. I didn't want to go particularly because she was asking for me, as if she knew that her time had come. I didn't want to go because I didn't know how to say good-bye.

But I did. I learned that good-byes were never choices for either of us. It just happened, no matter how hard I tried to hold on, no matter how strongly I clung to the memories. I just don't know how to verbally convey my own farewell, I don't have a clue which kind of good-bye will I tell her when it is time for her to leave. And obaa-san waited for me to come home. Just like she had been waiting her entire life. I kneeled down to her and receive a hug with full of love. I could feel her sagging body...her quiet breathings and her eternal love for me and for us all. She released me and looked intently into my eyes. I was so surprise to hear her say something I never expect from her.

"Kaede, your eyes...why so cold and blank?"

I can't respond. She guessed myself. I can't even look straight into her now. She only softly chuckle and smooth my cheek. Giving me the same smile she used to have three years passed.

I remember her waiting for me to wake up with a bag of cookies and a cup of milk ready by the porch. We'd dunk the cookies into the milk, one by one, laughing at the flakes that swum around the cup. Haruka's little giggles makes her smile...soaking up each other's company like the cookie that soaked up the rich warm liquid.

I remember her waiting to take me to the train station one morning that I failed to catch a ride to school.

We took a bus to the city proper, then walked to a nearby train station. She waited for me to get on the train before leaving. I remember running after the first train that passed my way, remember standing in the middle of the aisle, peering through the window and searching the crowd of goers for obaa-san's back.

I remember her waiting for Haruka one night after a gimmick. A guy friend of my sister dropped her off in his new car, and obaa-san, standing at porch with me, was a witness to the whole thing. She took in Haruka's friend, his expensive wheels, his let-me-open-the-gate-for-you gentlemanly behavior. As she waved goodbye to him, obaa-san laughingly joked, "Go answer him now!" It was the first time she talked about our lovelifes(or my lack of one), and it wasn't the last. I found it nonsense though, but also did found it happy whenever she starts to narrate her own love story.

And that afternoon of June 28, the day I went home, she was still waiting. She was unconscious when I entered her room. My mom said that she had been bedridden for three days, occasionally drifting back into concsiousness for only few precious moments. I didn't know where my knees found the strength to hold me up that day, the courage to walk to her bedside. I didn't want to see her like that-- grasping for breath as her face took on a sallow color. There I fully understood why they wanted me to go home. Looking at her, I couldn't keep on deluding myself: that she was dying, and that was the only time I ever allowed myself to consider the fact.

When it was clear that she wasn't waking up any time soon, I hit the court and decides to play. I couldn't concentrate, thinking of her state makes me to feel so guilty of letting those moments pass by, and those stupid and selfish excuses to rule my mind. She is one of those few people who understood how I feel and all that I had repaid her is nothing. When we I came back, obaa-san's eyes were already wide open. My aunt said she woke up just minutes before I arrived.

How do you begin to tell someone that you love her? At that moment, as I spoke in her native chinese dialect, with my funny accent and unintelligible pronounciation, I could not find the words. Obaa-san was the one who taught me to actually speak Mandarin.

She was the one who patiently tutored me on words that sounded foreign on my tongue. That moment, I wanted to surprise her and talk as fluently as I could. Obaa-san was crying-- her eyes staring upward, her mouth slightly open. Her tears gently slid from the corner of her eye into her thinning, silver hair. She never said a word. But I knew she had heard every word I said-- and every word I didn't.

"Wo shieh-shieh ni..."

That is all I could ever say fully in her dialect. When I told her to rest, she closed her eyes. She only opened them five hours later before she passed away. That is when the truth hit me-- she waited for me to say good-bye. Haruka was crying, head in my arms. I know how she feels. Being two of her grandchildrens of who grew up to her teachings, to her guidance and to her love. Two of the people she cared and loved. Even though I didn't admit that I am very sad...she knows that my eyes do so.

It's been three years after, and yet the pain is still there. Perhaps it will never go away. There is this insane hope that I will wake up someday and find her sitting on the porch with a cup of milk to offer me.

Maybe one day I will some home and find her with her usual cookings of warm dimsums and chao miens. Maybe one day I will hear her telling me over and over again her stories of old Chinese folk tales, in the practiced Mandarin accent that I can never dream to perfect.

Here we are now, in her grave. I decided to brought her her favorite flower...the lily. She told me that its whiteness and fragrance symbolizes innocence and honestly. I partly believed in that. She yearns Kyoto...for this place is the city of lilies. Now I know why.

I hope that one day, I'll see her with this flowers freshly cut, been carried in her arms. Her silver, thinning hair are once again black and her green eyes alive and youthful. Her body wearing a colorful and beautiful yukata...like she is an eighteen years old teenager.

In the real world, someone's death is never the end. We learn to leave the pain behind and get on with our lives. It's funny how even the simplest cliche has found meaning from empty moments and the broken silences. There is still much that I could have done, so much that I could have said. One day maybe, I'll get the chance. I will definitely get it.

A tear trickled on her cheek, as she neatly and carefully embraced his work. If only people knew of this, they would stop judging him with all those mistakes. Her oniichan had tried his best to express his feelings..unverbally though it is, but his words mark strongly. He left her with something to remember, and to learn. If only she had come a bit early...

"Oniichan...your chance had arrived, and I have hopes that someday...someday I'll see you on the porch with obaa-san, offering me a glass of milk and lilies...aishiteru, watashi wa anata wa...futari de...zutto."

---fin


End file.
